Friday, 30 August 2013

It’s been a while since I posted on this blog, last time I
posted about social media I promised to post about how to grow a following on
Tumblr, Twitter as well as Google plus so I am going to post about that today
as well a little info about how I am doing on Pinterest. I have been very busy
these past few months and have seen very good results for my main fitness blog
since I started focusing on social media marketing. So let’s get this started,
I am going to be catching you up to what I have been doing these past few
months, what has been working and what I am going to do to improve my
following.

How to grow Tumblr
followers and views

click to enlarge

So the last time I posted about Tumblr
my Tumblr blog was doing really well in terms of traffic, everything was on the
up and up but soon after that the traffic went down again. I can only explain
this by saying that maybe certain tags were bringing in traffic but since
tumblr is constantly updated others started getting traffic for those same tags.

click to enlarge and see traffic stats

-Tumblr blogs often do not rank very high on
search engine results unless you are looking at the image results which are a
totally different story. Tumblr ranks highly for the names of famous social
media personalities and celebs, but usually when Tumblr is ranking on the
search engines it’s a tag that’s ranking so the person with the most recently
updated Tumblr or most shared/reblogged post for that tag which could be a
particular celebs or social media personalities name gets the most traffic at
that point until someone else is on the front page on that tag. This is why my
traffic did not stay high for a long time because I was on the first page for a
certain tag than my post was replaced by newer and more reblogged posts on the
front page for that particular tag.

-A good way to track which terms are bringing you
the most traffic is to simply have a Google Analytics account for your Tumblr,
insert the analytics code in your Tumblr. When you know which tag brings you
the most traffic, you simply include that tag by posting more pics relevant to
that tag so that your posts are always on the first page of that tag.

-The reason normal image Tumblr posts do not
often rank well in non-image searches is because there are no words in posts, people
simply post images or images with quotes but the thing is Google can’t rank and
image without knowing what the image is about. So what I usually do is to write
a few relevant words under the posts to make sure it’s easier to rank my posts,
even if it’s a picture quote I still write down the quote under the picture as
a caption so that I may rank for that quote in the search results or so that my
posts show up when people search for different things related to that particular
quote.

-If I post a video, I also write down a short
description so that it ranks better both on Tumblr and in Google, for the same
reason I wrote above for the images.

-I also put many relevant tags or different
variations of the keyword I am trying to rank the image, written post or video
for.

-I post different types of media like written
quotes, old images with inspirational quotes or if you have great photoshop
skills like gymandmotivation.tumblr.com
you can create signature posts that everyone knows are from your blog through
branding, so it’s a good idea to have your own style of blogging don’t just
copy what others are doing.

-You can post original images instead of always
reblogging and then insert a link to your tumblr on the image so that people
click back to your tumblr for some reason many people like clicking on images.

-Don’t keep asking people to follow you that’s
annoying. Just follow many blogs like yours and they often follow back, to make
sure they notice you just like their posts, reblog some of them and also send
them a message about something you noticed about them or their blog.

-I have been posting 3 times a day queued to get
posted throughout the day between 12pm and 12 am. So I post 3 times within a 12
hour window. Using this method my tumblr is growing at 10 – 15 followers a day,
so my followers have been growing by between 300-400 a month. Now these are not
impressive numbers buts its growth.

-Oh and I almost forgot, there are many themes on
tumblr try to play around with the code a little and personalize your theme. I
took a simple and popular theme on tumblr and personalized it with my own colours
and changed the background image to a plain white. Your blog needs to be unique
so that people remember it and hopefully follow.

click to see personalized theme

Posting more often is said to grow your tumblr even faster
because your posts will always be on the front of peoples dashboards giving
them a better chance of being seen therefore a better chance for reblogs and
likes, also if you are tagging properly posting more often will get you see in
more places if you are using a variety of related tags. I have been posting 3 times
per day and many times I queue posts weeks ahead so it’s pretty difficult to
find relevant pictures and quotes that meet my standard that I can post more
often than 3 times a day and schedule weeks ahead (I would have to schedule 100’s
of posts and find 100’s of quotes which is a lot of work). People doing this
have seen faster follower gains and more traffic than I am seeing only posting
3 times a day. So try to post like 10 times a day but queue the posts so you
don’t spam people, you don’t want all your posts showing up at once in peoples
dashboards.

Even though my Tumblr daily Traffic has dropped from my Jan
Stats, however the time on site has improved and the pages per visit has
increased meaning I have more pageviews
per visit than before and my daily followers have improved slightly.
Also I am getting more regular asks than before which is good because the
questions I answer are free content and they give me post ideas for my written blog
which bring in good traffic. My Tumblr is Killin' It in Da Gym/
check it out, drop me a message if you like those are always welcome. Also as
you can see from the title of my Tumblr I am a fitblr so choose a niche you
like and blog about that, blogging about everything under the sun makes it
difficult to gain followers unless you are a pretty girl, a YouTube celeb or a
skinny pretty boy with a cool hairstyle with lots of fan girls.

How to grow twitter
followers for free

click to enlarge

I am not twitter famous but I have figured out a way to get
twitter followers who are interested in the same things I am interested in and
are more likely to retweet and click on links that I share. In growing my
twitter following I also wanted to connect with people I could actually form
friendships with; I did not want to follow celebrities or celebrity wannabe’s.
So at some point I was gaining like a hundred followers a day till I reached a
follow limit when I had followed more than 2000 people. I will tell you how I
was getting a 100 followers per day and the reason why I stopped this approach.

I would follow the hash tag #followforfollow or #followback
or some variation of this and I would follow every one of those people. Then I
would follow guys who are twitter promoters and get on follow trains basically
following everyone who retweeted a certain tweet about people who follow back. I got lots of followers this way but they were
not good followers, because they were just kids wishing to be twitter famous,
the problem with people obsessed with being twitter famous is that they copy
others tweets, or they tweet crap and they unfollow people as soon as they have
many followers making it seem like they are twitter famous when all they did
was lie and say they were #followback.

My thoughts back when I was following all these people was
that fitness is for everyone “who doesn’t want to get fit?” I thought. I was
wrong I soon used http://who.unfollowed.me to find those who unfollowed me or
who were not following me back after a while to unfollow all of those bastards.

My next tactic since I was into fitness was to use fitness
hashtags to find relevant people to follow. I did that successfully using tags
like #fitnessfollow, and #fitfam and #beastmode and various variations of those tags to follow different
people interested in fitness. I was just following people because they were
into fitness and many of them followed back and it was great but many did not
follow back and here's why... Those #fitfam
members with alot of followers already stop following back after a while so
they get a twitter famous mentality and some start off following back but as
soon as they reach like 2000 followers they unfollow people and adopt the loser
twitter famous mentality. I did the same to those fitfam fame seeking bastards
that I did to the #followback liars I
unfollowed their asses. There is a lot of talk about how great the #fitfam is but I have found that only a
few are genuine and willing to have real interaction others are there merely to
get attention by showing off their bodies and getting attention and
compliments.

What I learned from the above experience was to check the
persons follow to followback ratio before you follow them if they have too many
followers and they are only following back a few, do not follow that person.

To get better followers follow those who follow people who
follow you with the same interests. Follow new people who like the same things
you do and tweet them whenever you see a tweet you can reply to, retweet tweets
you like and favourite tweets from others it gets them to notice you and you
can build a twitter relationship from there.

Another tip is to follow famous twitter accounts that are
not personal such as accounts like she
want the D or a gym motivation twitter accounts in the fitness niche then
follow most people who are following them people they are more likely to be
people just like you but make sure to check the things I pointed out above to
make sure they are not bastards like the rest of the twitter famous wannabe’s.

If you liked my twitter advice make sure you tweet this post
and tweet something to me @ZuLuMuScLE
I would like to get to know more people.

How grow Google plus
followers and get more traffic to your blog from Google plus

click to enlarge

Google plus has become my favourite social network this
year, I did not understand it much last year but I have grown to love it. I
have made a lot of new friends there who I interact with on a regular bases and
a lot of people and bloggers have come to know my fitness blog www.zulumuscle.com because of G+. I have
had people pitch ideas at me and I have gotten guest posting opportunities to
other blog and to my blog through Google plus. It’s a great place for both
professional and social relationships.

It is very easy to get more followers for Google plus, all
you have to do is find communities on Google plus that are in line with your
interests and in my case that is fitness communities. In those fitness
communities you will find thousands of people so in order to get them to add
you to their circles you have to be a contributor to those communities by
posting there regularly, now I am not just talking about posting your own stuff
I mean engaging with people there asking questions, answering question, posting
helpful link and pictures quotes and relevant videos.

Then as soon as you are a regular and people in those
communities recognize you because of your daily helpful posts you will get some
who add you to their circle, you can be a good person and add them back (remember
you are no celeb), and for others you will need to make the first move and add
them and most of them will add you back.

Also just to make sure the chance of them adding you back is
high check they circles to see if they are followed by more people than they
follow back, if they have less people in their circles than they are in other
people’s circles it is unlikely they will follow you back unless you share
really good content. Follow as many people as possible and post to your goggle plus
daily.

Getting more traffic
from Google plus

To get many views to your blog posts just share your posts
on all relevant communities when you write them and add a description of what
you talk about in the post and why you wrote it, it’s a community so you have
to encourage discussion not just drop a link there. Make sure you engage with
the community not just drop a link every time you post because your post won’t
get many views then. You have to form relationships with people in the Google
plus communities so they want to share your stuff because you are their friend
and provide helpful information.

Post regularly in communities by sharing all kinds of stuff
not just your blog posts; share other google plus users posts as well so that
they can share your stuff with their followers if they like it. I always find
that I have very few people in common with my followers so if they share my
posts to their circle another set of eyes views my post.

Sharing on many related communities will get you traffic and
it will give you 1+’s which will make sure your post ranks highly in search
engines especially in the results of people in your circles and their circles
if they 1+’d your post. SO there are so many benefits to using Google plus and following
many people, joining all relevant communities and sharing your posts and other
people posts on these communities and forming relationships which all helps you
grow your following and 1 pluses and traffic.

Growing Pinterest
followers and traffic from Pinterest

click to enlarge

I do not have many followers on Pinterest but they are
growing slowly and they are are starting to share my pins more regularly. I am
going to post a few observations I made while using Pinterest.

Just like the other social networks you have to find a
relevant nice to post to and then you have to follow tags in that niche to find
people to follow so I would search for gym motivation in Pinterest and find
people sharing gym motivation then like their post and repin a few of their
pins then I would follow all their fitness related pins, I have found that most
people follow back on Pinterest. The only people who don’t follow back are the
100 automatically followed pinners I followed when I first got Pinterest. From the
people that I purposefully followed I would say more than 90% have followed
back and were it not for my limited time I would put more time into Pinterest
and find more like minded people on Pinterest.

I have found that pinning images regularly throughout the
day gets me a lot of repins and likes and has increased clicks to my fitness
blog even though I post pictures mostly from my Tumblr dashboard from other
blogs.

You should add a pin button to your bookmarks bar so that whichever
site you are on you can pin images whether or not that site has pin buttons.
When you pin posts that have been pinned by others, it usually shows others who
have pinned that picture so it’s a good idea to follow those people.

Make sure you don’t put everything together so have
different pin boards for different categories for example since I am a fitness
blogger I have boards dedicated to female fitness, gym motivation, ripped
celebs, bodyweight training, abs workouts etc. Another good idea is to have a
cool image as the cover for each board. Income diary wrote some good posts on getting
pinterest traffic and having personalised pin board covers with written titles http://www.incomediary.com/the-beginners-guide-to-seeing-massive-pinterest-traffic.

So that is it for now, as I learn more I will share more on
this blog. It’s pretty difficult to be on so many different social networks at
the same time and be able to grow your following and traffic from each of them that’s
why each month I focus my attention on two social networks more than the others
that is Google Plus and Tumblr (recently) as they give me some good traffic
which sticks around on my blog for longer. I am sure with more work Pinterest
can be a gold mine just as was revealed in the income diary post I shared
above. I do not blog regularly on this blog but that is I have not had time
between school and my fitness blog, gym and social media marketing. What I can
tell you is since I have started focussing on G+ and Tumblr my fitness blog traffic
has grown from like 150-200 visitors a day to 750-1000 visitors a day, now that
traffic is not the best in the world but it’s a big growth in traffic, also note
that those are just visitors so the page views are even more than that.

Thanks for reading this far, this was a long post (over 3000
words), please share this post if you liked it and add me to your google plus circles
and say hi.

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

I used to think I had my life all figured out, I thought I
knew what I wanted but I was wrong. I always say I have time, I am still young
but I know I won’t be young forever. I have always wanted to find some sort of
direction, some calling, something for me to chase after and to be passionate
about but the only thing I am passionate about at this moment is fitness but
what else? I feel there should be something bigger out there that I have to be
chasing. I feel I’m capable of achieving whatever I want but the problem is
that I don’t know what I want, I guess you could say I am sort of lost.

How do you view the concept of time?

In the mean time while I try to find myself I have to study
so that I have a secure future, because life is horrible to people without
money and education is the easiest and safest way to make money, even though
education does not guarantee employment, it increases chances of employment. I
have no passion for what I am studying that is the problem because I am not
sure if it’s what I want but I can’t just sit around and do nothing.

What I do know is that I want to be my own boss some day,
and I want to live a free, comfortable life. I always hated the idea of
following orders without question and always relying on someone else for
anything. I am a loner, I am dependent only on myself, and I hate owing people
so I will try by all means to make sure I do not owe anybody. Sure sometimes it’s
good to let others in and accept help when you need it but it’s not in my
nature to ask for help/assistance. Heck there have been times in the past
couple years when I should have asked for help and I did not, and I suffered
because of it.

Do you take advantage of the time you have each day?

I want to start using my time effectively, learn to trust
other people and accept and ask for help if there is a need for it. Time really
flies; I don’t want to be 30 and have kids without having ever achieved
anything or followed my dreams. I don’t want to regret not doing things; I
would rather make mistakes and learn from them, than be too cautious and not go
anywhere. I feel like I was in High School just yesterday yet it’s been like 4
years, I guess the next thing I will be 30 and feel like 21 was just yesterday
as well. Getting older happens without you noticing, it flies by through the
good and the bad times, through your failures and successes, the best thing to
do is not waste too much time and pursue what you want, even taking the long
way around if you know how it’s connected to your ultimate goal. But before you
can do all that chasing you have to know what you are chasing after and why...

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

I have had my main blog now
zulumuscle for just under 17 months, I have seen the traffic grow, because
of my efforts such as writing regularly and writing articles elsewhere for link
building, commenting on other blogs, submitting articles to article directories
and submitting every articles to bookmarking sites. For those same reasons I
have seen my blog lose most of its traffic. It has been a journey building,
having my house damaged and rebuilding for the past 17 months, I have survived
google update after google update, and now it seems my blog is coming out even
stronger than before. The first 16 months of my blogs existence it had a
blogspot.com after the blog name so that affected it in many ways which I shall
discuss below.

blogspot.com domain names suck

Hosting a blog on blogger is affordable well because its
free and it is reliable so you know that your site is always available. Just
because you are hosting your blog on blogger does not mean you have to have a
free domain name that ends with www.blogname.blogspot .com, for 10$ a year you
can have a www.blogname.com domain name yet many people fail to buy one. I was
one of those people but I always wanted to buy a domain name it’s just that I
did not know how I was going to buy it as no one in my household has a credit
card (we are against credit cards because you are spending money you don’t
have), I tried 4 months in to buy a domain name with my debit card but the bank
I was in said the card I had even though it was a visa was unable to purchase
things online, I could get paypal because putting money into paypal or receiving
money from paypal, heck verifying paypal in my country without having a credit
card is a pain in the ass. So you get why I did not purchase a domain name
earlier? That was ofcourse until a month or so ago when I found this local
website which sold domain name where I was able to pay for my domain name with
a local bank card (debit card); I was over the moon and purchased the domain
name immediately.

Country specific urls suck

Now let me get back to telling you why blogspot.com free
domain suck before I can tell you how me buying a domain name is connected to
this whole thing. See early last year blogger made it so if you were using
their free blogspot.com domain name, visitors from different countries will see/visit
different urls. Those from UK would see blognameblogspot.co.uk , Canadians
would see blognameblogspot.ca and a few other countries would see country
specific urls. What this meant was it was like you had many sites with the same
content and different urls. This sucked on many levels as this meant you would
now have to rank different urls for different countries, this would affect your
traffic and your pagerank. I for one saw this effect my blog was growing in
traffic for a while before the changes it had a page rank of 3 at one point then
the different country specific urls were activated and I started seeing a
decrease in visits and my page rank dropped down to 1 for the blog.spot.com
url, I did not bother checking the rest as they gave me insignificant traffic
except for blogspot.co.uk.

I started noticing that my traffic became one sided, by this
I mean before the country specific urls I was seeing growing traffic from all
countries afterwards other countries disappeared and my traffic became mainly
us, ca and uk. Brasil, germany, Poland,
spain etc. who seemed to be growing before dropped off the map. I tried
different things, still posted regularly but traffic did not seem to be
directly proportional to the work I put in like before. I got my traffic back
to the level where it was before at around 800-950 page views per day but I had
a hard time growing it past that point. These multiple urls certainly were not
helping if I wanted to improve global numbers, my link building was always
directed at my blogspot.com url and not the other country specific ones no
wonder my us traffic was growing to replace the traffic I once had from other
countries.

Have you ever seen a blogspot domain being number one in the
search engine for a competitive keyword? I haven’t and on the rare occasion
that it is, that’s usually right after google does one of its updates and
shakes up search engines and it’s usually a spam blog probably created for
linking purposes with garbage in it. People do not take a blogspot.com blog serious;
they do not click ads as much as they would in a private domain because they do
not trust blogspot domains becuse of the bad reputation that spammers give
blogspot domains. Many blogspot domains are run as casual blog sorta like this
one so no one really takes them serious. It is hard to build an authority blog
on a blogspot domain name. There are some really popular blog with blogspot
domain names but it’s much easier especially now with these country specific
urls to just buy a domain name. There are many of us with well kept, regularly
updated blogspot blogs who would be more successful had we used a private
domain name which brings me back to me buying a domain name. So this month I
got a private domain name and was expecting to lose some traffic first but I have
been surprised by the results.

What has been happening in my first month with a private domain
name?

Well for the first few days, traffic went down because the
blog was still in transition, redirecting and whatever goes on behind the scenes
when you buy a domain name after more than a year using a free domain name. I
had nothing to lose since my page rank was so low and I had read that I would
not lose traffic as it would all be redirected to the new address. After the
redirection my traffic was back to normal, but what happened next surprised me,
I started getting traffic from terms I was not ranking for before, I also saw a
rise in traffic on a few day it was double of my normal traffic. This month is
not over yet I am just talking about these past 20 days. I have started doing
some linking work to make sure I rank my new web address well, because it was
not possible before with the free domain name. I also suspect people share
content more when it is a dot com then when it’s a blogspot dot com. I have
began to see increased sharing of my posts as well but that could be because of
my increased activity in social media, which I shall write about soon just to
let you know how I have grown my following on several different social media
sites. The traffic this month is right now equal to the most traffic I have
ever gotten in one month, even though I had a couple of days with just around
25% of the usual visits because of the transition and I have only published for
articles this month which is less than usual. I cannot wait to see what happens
next.

I have always noticed that other blogs in my niche did not
post regularly, they posted about 4 times per month and had 8 times my traffic,
with what I have seen so far it’s evident that the domain name plays some part in
that not only content because I have some good content and case studies, and
list posts. I used to post a lot in the
past with more than 12 posts per month but I slowed down to about 8 per month
for a while but my intention was always to post less but longer posts and focus
more on marketing because what’s the use of having great content if no one ever
gets to see it.

The next post will be about How I have been growing my
social media following so be sure to come back for that soon.